653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood

1-415-586-3733
[email protected]

Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six

 

Live Streams every weekend!

Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!

Wednesday, August 21 – 7:30-9pm
Jazz & Tongues:
The George Sams Experience

Alien Anchor, George Sams

$20 cover/sliding scale available.

Trumpet player, composer, arranger & visual artist George Sams, from St. Louis, leads a quintet comprising Richard “Zyc” Wood on sax and flute (from Los Angeles), Aaron Parker on flute (from St. Louis) and still, to this day, residing in the Bay Area, Carleton Hoffman, percussion; Joe McKinley, bass; and Gerald Nicosia, poetry.

 

Already a veteran of the B.A.G. era in St. Louis, Sams was a founding member of the San Francisco Jazz Society alongside Orrin Keepnews and Herb Wong; co-founded the bands United Front and Middle Passage, both key San Francisco units in the mid- to late 1970s; was a developer of curriculum, instructor and then Music Department chair at New College of California; and has consulted for numerous jazz festivals and arts organizations.

 

 

He has performed throughout Europe and the United States as a jazz instrumentalist and has made recordings under RPM Records, Hat Hut, SAJ, Sound Aspects and Monclair Records. He has received both musician and composer grants and Meet the Composer grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In Missouri, he has worked in numerous education projects through the Young Audiences organization.

 

 

Mr. Sams has performed alongside countless musicians, including such masters as Eddie Moore, Andrew Hill, Lester Bowie, Hamiet Bluiett, Jon Jang, India Cooke, Oliver Lake, Malachi Thompson’s African Brass, Charles “Bobo” Shaw, J.D. Parran, Mark Dresser, Andre St. James, John Lindberg, Eugene Chadbourne, Jesse Foster, William Parker and Ratzo Harris; with the Al Tanner big band; and in the company of illustrious poets including Ntozake Shange, K. Curtis Lyle, Shirley Le Flore, Quincy Troupe and St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro.

 

 

Mr. Sams has appeared with the Hamiet Bluiett Orchestra in New York at the Visions Festival, with violinist India Cooke in California for the Berkeley Arts Festival, with Oliver Lake in numerous settings and in St. Louis with New Music Circle musicians. He was acting director of the Don & Heida Wolff Jazz Institute at Harris Stowe State University in St. Louis during the school’s initial hiring search.

 

 

 

 

And check this film doc trailer for some background on the St. Louis black artistic and political avant garde of the ’60s, from whence George sprang and where he’s at now… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO2HtjzpFU8

 

 

 

TAKE OUR SURVEY

To take our SURVEY, click here, and help the BBCLP get to know you better! As Duke Ellington always said, we love you madly...

The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project

Our events are put on under the umbrella of the nonprofit Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.

The BBCLP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit...
[Read More ]

 

The Independent Musicians Alliance

Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.

https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/

Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site

Sign Up for Our Weekly Emails!